Cricket: Rocky start for Glamorgan

IT might have lasted only 53 minutes but if the opening day of the championship season represents a microcosm of the summer then Glamorgan's supporters are in for an interesting, if often fraught, five months.

IT might have lasted only 53 minutes but if the opening day of the championship season represents a microcosm of the summer then Glamorgan's supporters are in for an interesting, if often fraught, five months.

Glamorgan captain Robert Croft had a smile on his face after winning the toss and deciding to bat yesterday.

But less than an half-an-hour later, following a near hat-trick, a needless run-out going for a fourth run, and a scoreboard reading 38-3 he had probably shut himself in a darkened room, with his hands over his face.

By the time rain ended any more prospect of play at 12.08pm a confident-looking Mike Powell and Matthew Maynard, beginning his 20th summer with the county, had rescued the position to a relatively solid 68-3.

But this was still not the start the skipper had demanded from his players.

Against a Derbyshire line-up minus such luminaries as Dominic Cork and Michael Di Venuto - the first defected to Lancashire, the second out for the season injured - Croft knew Glamorgan should be looking for a 20-point start to the campaign.

But, like so often before with Glamorgan, theory is easily muscled out of the way by reality. And a dodgy start was even more difficult for the supporters to take considering it was a former county trialist who inflicted the early damage.

Mohammad Ali, aka Ali Bukari, had played a handful of Glamorgan second-team games three years ago. The left-arm seamer had a reputation for being quick but with so many seam bowlers on the staff he decided to take an opportunity with Derbyshire.

It took him until only the seventh and eighth balls of his season to create pandemonium in Glamorgan ranks after play had begun 15 minutes late.

First he forced Matthew Elliott to edge a catch low down to first slip, and next ball umpire Barry Dudleston was straight up with the finger after David Hemp was hit on the pad in his crease. Glamorgan found themselves 12-2 in 14 deliveries.

Ali would have been disappointed with his hat-trick ball which strayed down the leg-side and allowed Powell to get off the mark.

Two wickets down within the first seven overs did not prevent Mark Wallace, promoted to open following Steve James' retirement in the close season, and Powell from adopting a positive take on the situation.

And the way the run rate mounted it was more Twenty20 Cup than county championship.

No doubt the sight of Ali, who can be wayward, and Mo Sheikh, on a month's trial from Warwickshire, taking the new ball ahead of Kevin Dean opened the Glamorgan's batsmen's eyes. The situation could not last and it did not.

Powell struck Sheikh through mid-on for three, but seeing Dean's throw sail over the stumps he called Wallace through for a fourth.

But the Glamorgan wicket-keeper was well short of his ground when Derbyshire's new signing James Bryant threw accurately from cover point.

What would Glamorgan's former scorer Gordon Lewis have made of it? He died suddenly earlier this month and both sets of players conducted a minute's silence in his honour before the start of play.

And you could hear a pin drop again as Wallace trudged back to the pavilion knowing an encouraging start to the season had been cut off in its prime. His 20 came off 17 balls, including three fours.

It was left to Powell and Maynard to repair the damage which had been done in a bizarre first few minutes of the 2004 season.

Maynard did his best to add to the theatre by getting off the mark with a thick inside edge which only just passed his leg stump.

And the veteran put more hearts in mouths when he chipped Ali into no-man's land on the leg side.

But, if it took Maynard time to find the measure of a typically slow, green Sophia Gardens seamer, Powell was more into his stride.

Powell had scored 485 runs in the last three championship games of last season and it was as if winter had never happened for him.

Judging by the way he dispatched Ali for two successive cover drives for four - the second the shot of the day - Glamorgan might still be able to take the upper hand in this match.